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Hi Marc,
After contemplating my navel for a week or so , without any success in terms of Enlightenment, I would settle for a couple of Buds /Fosters in your local tavern.After a few pints I reckon I would be in a state [not too sure what kind ] -possibly a drunken one.The first beer would be on me !! Cheers, Joe.

Hi Marc,
After contemplating my navel for a week or so , without any success in terms of Enlightenment, I would settle for a couple of Buds /Fosters in your local tavern.After a few pints I reckon I would be in a state [not too sure what kind ] -possibly a drunken one.The first beer would be on me !! Cheers, Joe.

Joe:

I will have to teach you the secret art of suds-zen. After a couple of pints of contemplation, we will be guided to Saporo-satori.

Joe, anytime you decide to cross the pond and head to the Left Coast we have some lovely local beers and ales and the first round is on me. Lars, same offer to you!

Dear Janet,
What an incentive !! To hell with aikido lets just go on a pub crawl.Personally I have met guys in beer halls who have more understanding of human condition than myself. Maybe alcohol has some therapeutic value? Janet , if you decide to visit the North East of England [rain /wind and chill factor at times only bearable by Polar bears] I will happily show you around and the local ale[Newcastle Brown ]
is a local delicacy. Cheers, Joe.

Dear Fred,
On what basis do you make this assertion?I would imagine that there are few people alive today who would be able to assess O Senseis level of spiritual level on a first hand basis.Most of what little we know of O Sensei is mostly second hand.Only people close to O Sensei I would suggest have any real understanding of the man. As far as Buddha is concerned while it took him years to reach his realisation would it not possible to have an revelation or a spiritual awakening without having to spend decades before acquiring enlightenment or wisdom?I am thinking of Paul who on the road to Damascus had his own revelation/spiritual awakening.Cheers, Joe.

Dear Janet,
What an incentive !! To hell with aikido lets just go on a pub crawl.Personally I have met guys in beer halls who have more understanding of human condition than myself. Maybe alcohol has some therapeutic value? Janet , if you decide to visit the North East of England [rain /wind and chill factor at times only bearable by Polar bears] I will happily show you around and the local ale[Newcastle Brown ]
is a local delicacy. Cheers, Joe.

Joe:

Reminds me of when we visited my oldest boy, who did a semester at University of York. Samuel Smith was cask drawn! Oh states of satori, nirvanna, etc....... Burp..... Nothing quite like local delicacies. If you do come back to the NYC area, a guy who went to school with my daughter, opened a microbrewery. Captain Lawrence. Rated now as one of the top 20 microbreweries in the world! Would love to share some of that elixir with you.

Marc, Joe,
As I never get tired of repeating, I hope you realise that sipping wine used to be an established Zen (Ch'an) method in the heydays of ancient China. I practise that wise approach to meditation quite regularly on my balcony, and the myriad things become one very easily.

I dont know what cultural decline set in to eliminate that form of practice from the Zen canon....

Marc, Joe,
As I never get tired of repeating, I hope you realise that sipping wine used to be an established Zen (Ch'an) method in the heydays of ancient China. I practise that wise approach to meditation quite regularly on my balcony, and the myriad things become one very easily.

I dont know what cultural decline set in to eliminate that form of practice from the Zen canon....

(My reference here is David Hinton's fantastic book "Mountain Home".)

Nicholas:

I am a proud follower of that tradition! Red wine is my preferred path to enlightenment. As a matter of fact, I am going to be opening a bottle of 2004 Cabernet in a couple of minutes...

I know a danish filmproducer who once set out to make a film with the above title: "In Vino Veritas"....
He, the director, a renegade son of an Italian wineyard owner, and the crew went to Italy to shoot this documentary at this wineyard (with a HUGE winecellar) and they returned 3 weeks later with no usable footage whatsoever, and a hangover the size of the european continent.
I guess if the truth is in the wine the truth in this case is that shooting a film with this title in a winecallar is alltogether a vary, very bad idea...! CHEERS !
Lars

(sorry for interrupting this thread and taking it in a bad direction.. couldnŽt help myself..)

Last edited by lars beyer : 03-18-2012 at 02:46 AM.
Reason: To ad a little (non) sence to my comment..

I've done both zazen and aikido for over 20 years, and for hundreds of times have sat nose to nose and stared into the eyes of the 105 year old zen master Joshu Sasaki Roshi ... my 2 cents.

For any level of understanding you will eventually need to ... reconcile the past, reconcile the present, and reconcile the future.

By itself, sitting will help you reconcile both the past and the present.
By itself, aikido will only help you reconcile the present.
And only a true teacher can get you to reconcile all three.

To that end, I see zazen being somewhat of a plus to an aikidoka (in dealing with the present moment), but neither by themselves or the two together is capable of getting you to any true level of understanding.

Joe, anytime you decide to cross the pond and head to the Left Coast we have some lovely local beers and ales and the first round is on me. Lars, same offer to you!

Damn, only saw this invitation just now.. bummer.. but anyway..
Thanks a bunch ! Next time you manage to paddle across, IŽll buy the first round, we have some mighty fine micro breveries so forget about all that "Carlsberg, probably (not) the best beer in the world".. there is far better stuff awaiting

Damn, only saw this invitation just now.. bummer.. but anyway..
Thanks a bunch ! Next time you manage to paddle across, IŽll buy the first round, we have some mighty fine micro breveries so forget about all that "Carlsberg, probably (not) the best beer in the world".. there is far better stuff awaiting

Everyplace probably has good local brews....to bring it back to original topic....if I were able to be physically comfortable sitting still maybe I'd see something to be gained in zazan... but to me a major point to, and plus of, doing aikido is that it involves movement.

Everyplace probably has good local brews....to bring it back to original topic....if I were able to be physically comfortable sitting still maybe I'd see something to be gained in zazan... but to me a major point to, and plus of, doing aikido is that it involves movement.

There are other meditation traditions that don't prescribe one specific sitting posture. In the Shambhala tradition, for instance, you can sit cross-legged, but you can also use a chair if that's what works for you. The point of the meditation isn't to torture yourself with a physically uncomfortable postion; on the other hand, this meditation practice (and zazen as well) do bring you into contact with discomfort in the larger sense, and help you develop tools for being present with discomfort rather than trying to avoid it or escape from it or numb it out. It's a very valuable skill.

There are other meditation traditions that don't prescribe one specific sitting posture. In the Shambhala tradition, for instance, you can sit cross-legged, but you can also use a chair if that's what works for you. The point of the meditation isn't to torture yourself with a physically uncomfortable postion; on the other hand, this meditation practice (and zazen as well) do bring you into contact with discomfort in the larger sense, and help you develop tools for being present with discomfort rather than trying to avoid it or escape from it or numb it out. It's a very valuable skill.

Dear Mary,
As you say one does not have to sit in seiza /half lotus/full lotus to practice zazen.If you need to use a chair thats ok.My own feeling is that sitting in a manner which gives you pain,numbness,cramps in your legs and can damage your knees is a bit counter productive.Its a bit like priests in the Middle Ages wearing hair shirts,practicing self flagellation in the mistaken belief that somehow they get closer to
God by exacting pain/discomfort on themselves. Maybe there is a hint of masochism here??Beats me.Please.
Cheers, Joe.

Some of us have issues simply with sitting still, including chronic pain. For us there is walking meditation. Or aikido. That's all I'm saying: I can't see how zazen specifically in and of itself is necessary for aikido or vice versa.

Some of us have issues simply with sitting still, including chronic pain. For us there is walking meditation. Or aikido. That's all I'm saying: I can't see how zazen specifically in and of itself is necessary for aikido or vice versa.

I don't think it is. I think that it's one of several (I wouldn't say many) esoteric practices that, when pursued in a disciplined fashion, can help one's aikido in an indirect way.

You might also make the argument that without some kind of practice that gives you training in being fully present, you'll be unable to do aikido (or a lot of other things) beyond a certain level. The better your training in these practices, the better you are able to function in a situation where a lot of stuff is going on at once, and if we take this a step further, as you train or try to use aikido in increasingly more challenging situations, eventually that ability will become necessary.

Interestingly, there are meditative traditions in Tibetan buddhism (Tonglen) Judaism (the Lamed Vov) and some of Meister Eckhart's Chistian writings about taking on the sufferings (impurities?) of "the world" in order to purify/transform them. These seem remarkably close to some of Ueshiba's pronouncements, IMO.

The position (asana) is not really relevant: whatever position best suits you for meditation or zazen, is already an asana Patanjali says.
You may even just lay.

Meditation differs from zazen inasmuch as with meditation you may choose a subject to focus upon (inclusive of an emotion).

Zazen, technically means that you stop your mind - that is, you try not to think. At that point position is not relevant, you will find already that controlling your mind is nearly impossibile, thoughts will keep popping.

It is said that if
1) you manage to do prolonged zazen without actual thoughts popping in
2) you manage to do that while in action
you would be (I quote from Takuan Soho) "unbeatable". However don't count on that - it is said also that one in several millions may succeed in being in full zazen whilst in action.

If you do zazen long enough, say months, you may add breathing exercises (though then it would be pranayama more than zazen, which implies not thinking even about breathing).

If you enter in dhyanas, it is reported you may spend a whole day there and not realize it.

In rare cases, you may experience stuff akin to OBE, it is said.

All signs like shivering, mental lights, physical vibrations, feeling circulation and pulse are normal. If you go on for a few months, you may get a taste about why they spoke about chakras, particularly abdomen and neck. If you start feeling chakras, you may get scared. If you don't get scared, I have no idea what happens next because I did.

ps: other phenomen I stumbled into: thoughts start falling in you: as if they were weights. Since you don't follow them anymore, they just "happen" but you let them go so you have the impression they have been flung at you. At times, you may experience a very frightening thing (at least to me): fully composed and meaningful sentences may start crossing your mind as arrows cast from who knows were - they swwoooooosh right in front of you, with a meaning.

Kototama also appeared in William Gleason's book, The Spiritual Foundations of Aikido.

I am currently reading this book and trying gain what insight I can in to his view of O'Sensei and Aikido. It's clear that O'Sensei was motivated throughout his life by a spiritual quest. Coming from outside Japan and trying to understand the concepts he was working with may be beyond me.

I have been practicing meditation for years. I've studied different types of meditation, so at this point my personal style is totally eclectic. I couldn't give a name to it. I just took different things from different styles that helped me and worked for me. Based on my experience, I would say that position is important in respect that the spine should be kept in proper alignment. Other than that caution, different positions can work.

I have also heard that to be a "complete" meditator, you need to practice a martial art. Same for martial arts: to be a complete martial artist, you need to practice some form of meditation. I have found that to be true for me. Each has helped me with the other.